Deveny right

Lefties miss Howard - Opinion - theage.com.au

It's hard to disagree with Catherine Deveny's general idea here, that Lefties like her are feeling a little deflated over not having John Howard to hate. (Phillip Adams used to say that hatred of Howard kept him alive. I wonder if he goes to the doctor more often lately.)

As Deveny says: "The left loves a whinge, a wine and a rant."
And her line about John Howard being like "an ex-boyfriend we're over" rings true too: "We don't want him back, but we want to know he's suffering."

The funniest thing about her column , though, is inadvertent. She characterises the Howard years as follows:

...people felt disillusioned and powerless with a government that ran on spin, dog whistles, scare campaigns, pork-barrelling and fear-mongering.

Sounds like a description of the 2020 Summit to me. (OK, the summit was not technically the government, but the way it was run, it may as well have been.)

It especially had all the elements of "dog whistling" that the left used to love to attack.

A very funny Colbert

This segment from The Colbert Report, on current international food problems, is really top notch comedy writing:

The coming cat peril

Are cat colonies a legal and ethical part of nature?

(Answer: no, no, no, no, No!)

From the article (about feral cats in California):

While most states are stricter in their regulations regarding feral cats, case law in California legitimizes feral cat colonies. These colonies are established or tended by well meaning "caretakers" who believe that cats have a right to live in nature. They are fed and watered daily by the these caretakers. In some parts of the state -- Sonoma County for example -- colony densities approach three to five colonies per square mile and may have 20 or more feline members.

Realizing that one pair of cats, having two litters of five kittens per year, can exponentially produce over 400,000 cats in a lifetime, can we begin to understand the problem. And it is a worldwide problem. A recent study in Australia found more than 12 million feral cats in the country; feline experts in the U.S. peg the number of feral cats here at 70 million.

At that rate, it is clear we soon will not have enough ground to stand on: (400,000 x 6,000,000).

But then again, maybe there's a reason I am not a demographer.

More on anti-Semitism and its spread

Report: Muslim anti-Semitism 'strategic threat' to Israel | Jerusalem Post

It's an interesting report on the changing nature of anti-Semitism. An extract:

Among the report's most worrying findings is the growth over the past three decades of uniquely Muslim roots to older European versions of anti-Semitism. Without discounting classical Christian Europe's canards regarding secret Jewish conspiracies, the ritual slaughter of non-Jewish children and other allegations of Jewish evil, anti-Semitism in the Muslim world increasingly finds its own, Islamic reasons for anti-Jewish hatred through new interpretations of Islamic history and scripture.

From the Koranic story of a Jewess who poisoned Muhammad, to the troubled relations between Muhammad and the Jewish tribes of Arabia, radical Islamist groups and thinkers have been using extreme anti-Semitic rhetoric that has grown increasingly popular with the Muslim public, particularly in Iran and the Arab states. Using well-known Koranic texts, these groups have been mapping out the Jews' "innate negative attributes" and teaching a paradigm of permanent struggle between Muslims and Jews.

The goal of this "Islamified" anti-Semitism, according to the report, is to transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a national territorial contest which could be resolved through compromise to a "historic, cultural and existential struggle for the supremacy of Islam."

Sounds about right to me. And the problem is, once you have a significant part of your population brainwashed with such stuff, how does the leadership talk them back down into a compromise with a side that that has been cast as inherently evil?

Just a politician

Kevin Rudd has shown the resolution to that age old riddle "what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object". Clearly, the answer is that there is no such thing as an irresistible force, as demonstrated by the inability of any force to separate our Prime Minister from a television camera. (Or perhaps I got that wrong, and there is an irresistible force: that which draws Kevin into the orbit of the nearest camera. You choose.)

Yesterday, after the 2020 Kevin Summit, I saw him on both Sunrise and The 7.30 Report.

On the latter, he was clearly in disingenuous politician mode:

KEVIN RUDD: .... For the Government, and remember for the 11 years or 12 years that the Howard Government was in office, the opportunity for a top down review of the entire taxation system was there. Instead they want for partial activity on consumption tax, and a partial activity on business tax. And business regulation.

KERRY OBRIEN: I think you'd have to acknowledge, I don't want to get bogged down in this, that embracing the consumption tax is one of the biggest single tax reforms in this country's history?

KEVIN RUDD: I would disagree with that. I think it's a different form of taxation but when you come to the overall impact of income tax, of company tax, personal income tax, company tax, indirect taxes, the transaction taxes of the States, and the overall effect of the combined taxation system, measured against global tax competitiveness, previous Government didn't do anything of the sort.

Of course, Kerry didn't press Kevin on this. (There remain very, very few occasions when Kerry O'Brien has shown him any aggression at all.) But, one would have thought these follow up questions might have been appropriate:

"You do recall, however, that the GST was intended by the Howard government to have a bigger effect than it eventually did, eg by removal of stamp duty, but political compromise prevented that?"

"Do you still stand by your assessment of GST as a "fundamental injustice"?

"Does your pre-election insistence on their being no GST increase under your government make a 'top down' review of taxes something of a pointless exercise, if you are going to cordon off that possibility?"

But instead Kerry went off tangent onto the completely out of the blue matter of whether Rudd liked "Advance Australia Fair". Nothing like pressing the serious issues, hey Kerry?

How very reasonable (sarcasm mode)

We can accept Israel as neighbour, says Hamas | World news | guardian.co.uk

From the report:

Hamas said today it would accept a Palestinian state on land occupied in the 1967 war, but it would not explicitly recognise Israel.

Jimmy Carter sees this as progress, but:

He [Carter] acknowledged that Hamas still refused to recognise explicitly Israel's right to exist, or to renounce violence, or to recognise previous peace agreements. The movement did not agree to speed the release of an Israeli corporal captured two years ago, although it did tell Carter it would let the soldier, Gilad Shalit, write a new letter home to his parents to prove he was still alive.

And how about stop teaching your children that their neighbours literally want their blood for dinner.

More important than the 2020 Summit

BBC NEWS | Muslim call to adopt Mecca time

Muslim scientists and clerics have called for the adoption of Mecca time to replace GMT, arguing that the Saudi city is the true centre of the Earth.

Mecca is the direction all Muslims face when they perform their daily prayers.

The call was issued at a conference held in the Gulf state of Qatar under the title: Mecca, the Centre of the Earth, Theory and Practice.

Of course, if we are going to fiddle with Mean Time, we should be considering Nambour as the birthplace of the new dawn.

A Quest on a quest of his own

CNN reporter in sex, rope and drug scandal - World - smh.com.au

I don't watch much of CNN, but this guy (whose name I never even went out of my way to check) has long been on my radar as having a particularly irritating style. ("Boisterous and quirky" is how this report describes him.)

He's a lot more quirky than we first thought, it seems.

So that's what I forgot over the weekend..

US neo-Nazis gear up for Hitler's b'day | Jerusalem Post

From the article (which appeared last week):

America's neo-Nazis will be staging a series of events and rallies across the US next week to mark the 119th anniversary of the birth of Adolf Hitler on April 20, 1889....

The events include on April 19 an anti-immigration march in Washington DC, a "family friendly" cookout in memory of Hitler in Morganton, North Carolina, for members of the white supremacist website Stormfront...

Still, it's not too late to join in the fun:

On April 26, Crew 38, a group close to the violent neo-Nazi group Hammerskin Nation, will hold an "Adolf Hitler Memorial and BBQ" in Houston with a swastika lighting.

Seriously, is it at all conceivable for there to be any better definition of "loser" than being a neo-Nazi in the 21st Century?

Unbelievable

Police charged Down's syndrome boy with mental age of five - Times Online:

When two police officers came to interview Jamie Bauld, a polite, friendly Down’s syndrome boy with a mental age of about 5, he welcomed them with a big smile and a handshake. As the officers read him his rights and charged him with assault and racial abuse, he agreed with everything they said, then thanked them for coming to see him.

Yesterday Jamie’s parents told The Times that they had been through a seven-month ordeal with the Scottish legal system over what they described as a minor fracas between two youngsters with learning difficulties.

Jamie, 18, cannot tie his shoelaces or leave home on his own, nor can he understand simple verbal concepts such as whether a door is open or shut. But his parents said that he was charged with attacking a fellow student, an Asian girl who also had special needs....

They believe that he was a victim of the zero-tolerance policy on racism under which police have to respond to any complaint, however minor.

Summit reaction

The most disturbing and dis-spiriting things about the 2020 Summit do not include the entirely predictable fact that it ended up with barely a single entirely novel idea. Rather, they were:

1. the sight of the assembled "best and brightest" during the final summing up session appearing to think that it was all an outstandingly worthwhile exercise;

2. Kevin Rudd being so very obviously buoyed by all the love in the room.

I didn't fully appreciate before that the Australian "intelligentsia" (and a considerable number of business leaders as well) were such a needy bunch that this faux act of being "listened to" would make them all swoon. Who knew that the media would (by and large) also roll over?

Of course, the papers are letting their "usual suspects" be as cynical as they like; but there is no doubt that the editorial stance of the Fairfax press in particular has been entirely gullible on the issue of the value and purpose of the exercise. The ABC TV coverage's "bookend" comments that I saw (although I missed most) were so bad they gave the impression that Rudd's PR team had a direct feed into the teleprompt.

Honestly, it has actually felt like watching a insidious process of corruption of the nation.

Maybe my badly shaken faith in the common sense of the people will be partially restored if we get some cynicism reported via some - any - disillusioned attendees over the next few days.

But you know what this whole exercise has made me secretly yearn for? Some actual, immediate crisis or disaster for this PM to have to make a hard decision about; rather than this nauseous concentration on both building up his own profile and defusing potential enemies.

UPDATE: Annabel Crabb has written up the summit as a religious event all about the PM, and this line struck me as the funniest:

On one visit to the Economy group, he [Rudd] arrived among a standing group of summiteers and promptly seated himself on the floor. He did not wash anyone's feet or anything, but the "Suffer the little economists to come unto me" theme was obvious enough nevertheless.

Don't believe him

The Sakai is the limit - Food & Wine - Activities & Interests - Travel

In this story in the Sydney Morning Herald (mainly about one very expensive restaurant in Tokyo,) the writer claims of he and his wife:

We had thought we could cope on a daily food and transport budget of $100 or just under ¥10,000. But whether we are in the glittering Ginza or the relative grunge of Electric City, our only affordable meal seems to be tiny watery noodle meals with small servings of beer or sake.

These little lunches, whether from semi-automated train station cafeterias or battered old diners, cost an easy $30 combined and still leave us hungry enough to chew our hands.

Now, unless Mr Thompson and his wife have unusually large calorific needs or desires, this is absolute rubbish.

Anyone can find a filling and tasty meal in Tokyo, especially at lunch, for around $8 to $12. Apart from the train stations, the department stores all have good, cheap eating. It's not even hard in upmarket Ginza. And it's not all noodles I am talking about either.

The one thing I routinely tell people about Japan is that, while accommodation is relatively expensive (and hotel rooms are small for the price), the cost of eating is not so expensive, unless your do want to go to higher end restaurants or eat all the time in your hotel.

If the SMH wants to pay me to demonstrate the ease of eating on $45 a day in Tokyo, I would be happy to oblige.

A very American end of the world

Escape, Carolyn Jessop's memoir of life with the FLDS, condensed. - Slate Magazine

Slate gives us a handy summary of some of the beliefs and practices of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (being the Texan group which recently had the kids removed.)

This part is particularly odd:

In a favorite children's game, called Apocalypse, kids act out the FLDS vision of the end of the world. According to FLDS lore, Native Americans who were mistreated and killed in pioneer days will be resurrected in the end times, when God will allow them to wreak vengeance on those who wronged them (the presumably also-resurrected settlers). In return for this indulgence, "resurrected Indians" will also be "required to take on the job of protecting God's chosen people"—FLDS members—by killing FLDS enemies with invisible tomahawks that can sever a person's heart in half. Very cowboys and Indians!

Bad, bad idea

Rock bottom | Comment is free

Have a look at the trailer at the movie website (there's a link in the article.) Yes, it looks like just about the worst concept for a movie comedy, ever.

Photo time

I went camping the weekend before last, and I have a few photos to prove it:


This tent is old. I bought it when I was about 18 or 19, used it for a few years, then packed it away for about 26 years until having kids inspired me to resume camping again. To my surprise, it had not rotted away or been consumed by vermin. Now I get to bore any other family we travel with by explaining this story of remarkable tent longevity, and making "how long can a tent last?" observations, every time I am setting it up or taking it down. Oh - the yellow inflatable canoe - it's nearly as old too.


This is sunrise the first morning. Either that or a thermonuclear explosion over distant Caboolture. (I'm such a romantic.)

This type of skinny spider was everywhere:


But for a really weird looking one, try this:


If it's a new species, it should be named after Des, who was the one who spotted it and insisted I take a photo just in case he was its discoverer.

The last photo is of sunrise on the second day, with added cloud:


The place, incidentally, was the Lake Somerset Holiday Park, which is huge, has excellent facilities, and very friendly management. Just bring something that floats in which to potter about, and it's great.

Over 45? Sit down, relax

Exercise May Lead To Faster Prostate Tumor Growth

What all middle aged men have been waiting for: an excuse to sit around and get fat.

The experimental model that this is based on is not exactly close to real life, though:

The researchers implanted prostate tumors subcutaneously in the flanks of 50 mice and then put half of the mice in cages with exercise wheels and half in cages with no wheels. All mice were fed the same diet. On average, the exercising mice ran more than half a mile each day.

So, next thing is to try to do this a bit more realistically:

The researchers are currently conducting a validation study, in mice, in which tumors are injected directly into the prostate, thereby better simulating human prostate cancer, Jones said.

Just how big is a mouse prostate? How do you tell if it's enlarged?

So-called neutral

Washington Watch: Doing good business with evil | Jerusalem Post

An interesting opinion piece from the Jerusalem Post, complaining how the Swiss will deal with whoever they like (currently, Iran) if it suits them.

The whole topic of the role Switzerland played during WWII is something about which I don't know much. Put it on the almost endless list of "things worth reading a book about one day." (I like to imagine that this is what heaven is for: a very, very long time to catch up on reading.)

Contradictory evidence

Study Sees an Advantage for Algae Species in Changing Oceans - New York Times

Bah! Just after I spend time catching up on ocean acidification, and trying to encourage readers to worry about the effect on carbonate-incorporating algae, a new study indicates that they have actually done better under increased CO2 levels, contrary to previous studies and expectations. (Who would have guessed that it makes a difference if you bubble gas into the water, rather than simply add acid to it?)

Neither the article above, or the other one it links to, talk about whether this means this is an automatic way the earth is increasing the oceans as a CO2 sink. But my guess is that it can't be hurting in that regard.

However, the article also says that this research doesn't mean the coral reefs are safe from acidification.

And: I also wonder whether someone will come up with a concern about too much algae being produced in some regions with too much acidification. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I didn't think you really wanted a lot of certain types of algae in shallow waters.

More information required.

And no gloating please, Andrew Bolt.

UPDATE: It gets worse (for my previous post.) According to the Ocean Acidification blog, there's an article in Science that is claiming we simply don't know enough to be able to dismiss coral reef's ability to adapt to increased acidification. I think the suggestion is that other types of coral will simply replace the ones that are more sensitive to it.

But then: the worriers have made a response already. And they make the point that, when corals have disappeared in the past due to high ocean acidification, they have taken millions of years to recover.

It's a big gamble, isn't it? My gut reaction is still that increasing the acidity of the entire ocean by a factor of 2 or 3 over a relatively short period of time (a century or so?) is a dangerous experiment to be playing. We can't even stop the first part of it, due to the lag time in CO2 absorption, but we can try and stop the worst of it.

Boeing 777 crash still a worry

There was a safety bulletin put out by the British Air Accident Investigations Branch in February 2008, regarding the Boeing 777 crash at Heathrow.

The circumstances of the accident are described (while at 720 feet from landing, one engine reduced power, followed by the other within 7 seconds, and then they wouldn't respond to the request for increased thrust.) There was some rubbish found in the fuel tanks, but it seems that is not the obvious answer. The fuel itself did not seem to be contaminated.

Odd, hey? At the end it says they are looking at the high pressure fuel pumps, and the fuel system generally.

Rice woes

As Australia dries, the world suffers - International Herald Tribune

I didn't realise until recently that Australia's rice production was internationally significant. Normally:

Annual world production totals 600 million tonnes with only 25 million tonnes traded outside the country of origin. While Australian rice represents only around 0.2% of world rice production, remarkably Australia exports represent over 4 % of world trade.

That's about a million tonnes of rice. But we won't be exporting a grain this year:

A few dozen growers - most using water pumped from underground - will harvest just 18,000 tonnes for domestic consumption, it is forecast.

But one thing that puzzles me about this is the question of where we grow rice in this country:

Rice is grown on some 145,000 ha of land, mainly in the irrigated areas of south-eastern Australia. Eighty per cent of rice produced in Australia is of medium-grain Japonica varieties, which are well suited to high summer temperatures without the humidity of tropical climates.

Huh? Haven't we routinely got water to excess in the Ord River dam in WA, as well as in many North Queensland dams? Isn't rice generally well suited to the tropics?

Here's my brilliant Australia 2020 suggestion: let's try growing rice where the water is! (Thank you, thank you, it was nothing really.)